The loudness war is finally coming to an end. Many of the studio clients are asking me to determine the overall level of the mixes. This gives me the ability to mix more dynamic range into the audio instead of smashing the audio to squeeze as much volume as possible out of the tracks. This makes me so happy to hear quality music being produced at the studio.

Mixes that are smashed and hyper-compressed are lifeless and have no soul. The industry is flooded with this garbage and now we have a generation that will have to live with some form of hearing loss. I'm not sure what record execs were trying to achieve. They didn't sell any albums this year. Only Taylor Swift went Platinum and her album is not hyper-compressed. Go figure.